Computers and their application programs are used in all aspects of business, industry and academic endeavors. In recent years, there has been a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. This advance has been even further accelerated by the extensive consumer and business involvement over the Internet. As a result of these changes, it seems as if virtually all aspects of human productivity in the industrialized world require human/computer interaction. The computer industry has been a force for bringing about great increases in business and industrial productivity. Almost every week seems to bring computer industry advances which promise even further increases in productivity. These advances offer to drive down business and industry costs and increase efficiency, in addition to increasing productivity. In addition, the cost of “computer power” continues to drop as a result of rapid advances in computer related technologies.
Despite all of these advantages there still remains great resistance in all industries and business fields to new computer systems and significant system upgrades, which offer much in productivity increases. This resistance results from past experience, which equates installing new computer systems or significant upgrades in existing systems with large amounts of down time, during which the business, manufacturing facility or individual worker functions are inoperative or operate at diminished levels. When a business or production facility is trying to decide whether to install a new computer system, the concern about down time, the possible loss of business, as well as stress on the workers involved, very often outweighs the cost of the installation in influencing the decision. The concern about business and production delays resulting from installation has become so great that fewer and fewer small businesses are trying to make system and program changes on their own. This concern is even greater when the business is considering the installation of a computer network. While many businesses would likely be much more productive if their computers were interconnected with each other, the thought of a network may be very frightening to many small businesses without much computer experience.
Because of this expanding demand for computer and network installations, many major manufacturers and distributors of computer components, both hardware and software, have been expending great amounts of research and development efforts to develop programming systems and tools to simplify and expedite such computer system and network configuration installation and upgrades. These tools may be used directly by the purchasers of the components who are setting up their own systems and to whom the manufacturer/distributors may sell directly. They also may be used through intermediate providers or resellers in the professional computer service industry which carries out and supports installations and upgrades for the business and industrial sectors. In either the case of direct sales to the purchasers of components for systems or through such professional installers or resellers, distributors who have developed such system configuration programs need to be adequately compensated for their expenditures through the sale of their components used in the systems. Both of the above cross-referenced patent applications offer solutions. In Ser. No. 09/159,954, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,336,101, the distributer or manufacturer of the computer components, which has developed the process for configuring computer systems or networks, provides to the seller or reseller a configuration process comprising a prompting system for computer purchasers to make a sequence of interactive data entries, each of said entries relative to the data processing needs of the purchaser of one of said computer systems, allocating said computer components to said computer systems based upon said user entries, tracking the quantities of said computer components thereby allocated to computer systems sold by said seller to said purchasers during a selected time period, and determining to forego fees due from said seller to said distributer for said process when said quantities of components thereby allocated during said time period exceed a selected level.
Copending cross-referenced patent application Ser. No. 09/282,616 provides the reseller with a hierarchy of related financial incentive levels based upon the sales of the manufacturer or distributer's computer components.